Thursday, September 10, 2015

One night last week a did a little wacky zombie doodle before going to bed.

There was something about it that stuck with me, so the next evening I decided to have a go at sculpting him as a small maquette. I decided to use Super Sculpey because I had some, and most of my oil clay is tied up in my Vincent Price project. Plus, this way I'll get to have a hard copy to keep without molding it. Also, it's a medium I'm not used to, so I'll get a little extra education out of this.

This is about two hours in. Didn't think to take a picture earlier because I didn't know if I was going to want to continue with the idea. I started with just the head and neck, propped it up on the block of wood to get a better look at it, squished a bit of clay on either side to help support it, and realized I could add some more interest by adding a bit of chest.

Next I put a little more detail work into the face

I realized I'd really need to rethink how it's on the base. So I built it up a little bit...

Oops! More than I meant to, though. Guess I've got more sculptural ground to cover than intended.I thought about giving him arms at this point, but decided that opened the flood gates a little too much. Trying to keep this quick and fun.

A couple of assorted thoughts: The inspiration for the ears are dried apricots. I really ended up favoring character over polish on this. I guess I was sort of testing the limits of how far I can push it into cartoon land. It's definitely not perfect, but it was satisfying to turn it around in a few evenings and call it done.

Then I baked him and painted him with cheapo acrylics and 5 minute epoxy over the eyes.